Meet Rosie

Okay, I’ll say it: I’m addicted to cake. Well, just about anything pretty and baked. Heck, even anything pretty, or, well, come to think of it, anything baked. I’m devoted to the art of baking, cake & confection design, photography, cake pedestals, good coffee (often), and just about anything sprinkle-covered. Since my first job at a fancy bakery when I was 16, I realized I have a (possibly unnatural) fixation with cakes and baked goods. It wasn’t, though, until I took cake design and baking courses at Bonnie Gordon School in Toronto, that I fell just as in love with designing cakes as baking them. Although I haven’t always been a cake & confections designer, it’s simply what I’m meant to do.

And just when I thought that a career of making cakes and tossing sprinkles was more excitement than I could handle, I have recently realized my lifelong dream of becoming an author. My first cookbook, entitled The Sweetapolita Bakebook, hit shelves on April 7th, 2015. Hooray! You can learn more about my book here.

I live in a port town east of Toronto, Canada, with my husband and our two cakelets, Reese Amelia (born in 2007) and Neve Winter (born in 2009). They are the icing to my cake, and they make me laugh—a lot. Surrounded by girls, my husband is definitely out-numbered, but he doesn’t seem to mind and is yet to complain about the colour pink or cake crumbs in the bed. Life is good.

I believe a big part of my love of entrepreneurship stems back to my days as the co-creator of Cake Beauty–a popular boutique brand of bath and body products. I created the initial line of decadent handmade products, with a friend (and all of my heart and soul) in my tiny kitchen in 2000 (yep, my kitchen!). After a year of hard work and determination, we had a collection, and we ran with it. After several exciting years together, I felt I had no choice but to move on. She still runs the company, and, for me, knowing Cake has continued to thrive is like watching my baby grow up. I’m so thankful for everything I learned through the process of starting such a successful company from the ground up. I wanted to mention it because, truly, it’s a big part of why I am who I am today. Turns out you can take the girl out of Cake, but you can’t take the cake out of the girl.

I started this blog in late 2010 as a way to share my love for baking and caking with, well, anyone who would listen, and much to my delight I was welcomed to the blogosphere with open arms. What amazes the most is how enthusiastic and encouraging readers are, and how global this passion for cake-and-sprinkles really is. You’ll notice that, while I love to bake almost anything and everything, my heart belongs to layer cakes–the more decadent and unique the better, even though many of them begin with classic and nostalgic flavours. And because I strive to create the best recipes I can, my blogging style is to only share the recipes once I’ve worked with them enough to give them the Sweetapolita stamp of approval. So you might find that while I don’t post every day, when I do post, I try to make it count.

You can watch my official (and somewhat-awkward-but-hopefully-charming) Hello video here.